The recruitment industry has been in a state of flux for the last several years and is evolving as I write. Market behavior, diminished budgets, increasing demand for specialized skills set, the reliance on sophisticated metrics to understand hiring patterns has put a whole lot of demand-supply pressure on Human Resource departments and business leaders to stay ahead of the curve.

As a Talent Outsourcing, Staffing Enablement and consulting organization, we at Han Digital have been keenly observing and studying sourcing trends, requirements, what works, and what doesn’t.

I have aggregated a list of insights as published by other leaders in the talent acquisition space, including our own observations, which, I think, are going to play a significant role in the design and implementation staffing plans for the current year. These insights will help HR and business leaders to learn, plan and deploy recruitment strategies that will ensure business continuity in a timely, phased and smart manner.

1. Linkedin:

• Social networking sites are increasingly impacting quality of hire
• Data is used to make better hiring and branding decisions
• Companies are investing in hiring internally to stop top talent walking out of the door
• Mobile recruitment is beginning to play a larger role

Source: Gobal Recruiting Trends 2013-india by Linkedin

2. DDI:

• Organizations fill open positions with more internal & minimum external candidates.
• Nearly half of the organizations are planning to change their approach to recruitment and selection.
• Focus on the use of Application testing and assessments (not widely used in typical selection systems currently) will increase.
• Less than 20% of organizations use behaviour based interviews which have proved to  increase sustainability.!

Source: Global Selection Forecast by DDI 2012&2013

3. Han Digital:

• Organizations are beginning to benchmark C&B by skills/JD and not by job function
• Market intelligence data is increasingly used in recruitment decision making
• Cost of hiring and hiring metrics are becoming increasingly important
• Traditional mode of recruitment for the commoditized junior roles is soon going to become redundant.
• Internal hires within the organization are increasing

 Source: Han Digital Analysis and IT industry Watch 2013 report

4. ere.net

• The competition for top talent intensifies
• Predictive metrics and use of data is witnessing increased usage
• Employer branding returns as the only long term recruitment strategy
• Recruitment function to adopt the practice of monetizing the business impact
• Boomerang Rehire will become essential phenomenon (Higher quality of hiring)

Source: Top 25 Recruiting Trends, Problems & Opportunities for 2014 by ere.net

My recommendations:

• Companies must grow as an expert in the art of talent mapping, and it is talent mapping which I believe is the catalyst needed in the talent network/community building process.
• Make a practice to know the market place and talent dynamics
• Use of social recruiting as first step.
• Create and encourage sourcers instead of resources.

(The difference between a sourcer and a resourcer is that a real sourcer looks for people where as a resourcer is looking for resumes)

Recruitment has emerged from being a mere “gut-feel”, traditional, conservative practice to a sophisticated, behavior & metrics driven domain that is adopting innovative technological tools and a scientific approach to fulfill specialized staffing requirements. How you utilize these insights and cope with your staffing challenges is up to you.

Cheers & Good Luck !

Saravanan Balasundam (Saran)